Home Improvement Solution

Posts Tagged ‘New Cabinets’

If you’re like me, you’ve been sitting around the house all winter keeping a mental list of the home improvement projects you want to start. Now that spring is here, it’s time to get started. Not only will home improvements beautify your daily surroundings, they also add to the resale value of your home. So, there’s no time like the present to pull out a paintbrush or two and start making home improvements.

The easiest and least expensive way to dramatically improve both the exterior and the interior of a home is with paint. A fresh coat of paint breathes new life into a tired looking living room. Nothing says curb appeal like a gorgeous exterior color. To get things started, buy some masking tape, tarps, rollers, brushes, paint, spackle and sandpaper.

Touch up any cracks in the walls with the spackle and sandpaper, tape off your carpeting and sideboards, and get to painting. Remember to select a neutral shade that will suit a wide range of tastes if you intend to sell your home anytime in the near future.

Once the walls are gleaming and gorgeous with their new paint jobs, take a good look at your old lighting fixtures and hardware. Does the brown stained-glass chandelier in the kitchen look more like it belongs in the local pizzeria than in a high-end home magazine? Perhaps a trip to the hardware store is in order.

You can replace a light fixture and modernize a room for less than $100 and an hour of work. It will totally change the ambiance of the room. It can even change the atmosphere of the whole home if the fixture is in a highly visible spot. The same is true for hardware; changing doorknobs and drawer hardware can shave years off the appearance of your home.

Now that you’re seeing your home in a new light, so to speak, let’s give some attention to your cabinetry and countertops. Are they still looking like a country kitchen from the 1980s? Well, installing new cabinets is a lot of work and costs a pretty penny. What about paint or new hardware for the cabinets? It’s possible that painting them a dark gray and adding some glass panels will change their look entirely.

Try to improve your cabinets without breaking the budget. Then, use the money you save on your cabinets to renovate your countertops. Granite has dropped dramatically in price in recent years, and looks dynamite. Have professional installers give you an estimate on the cost for new countertops per square foot. If granite is still a bit out of your price range, laminate countertops are an affordable option that will make your kitchen shine again. Even putting tile over your old countertops is a viable option if you’re trying to keep your home improvements on a budget and renovate your kitchen on the cheap.

Spring is in the air, and it’s the perfect season to get started on home improvement projects. Plant some new shrubs, paint your bathrooms, change old light fixtures and add some spice to your kitchen. You’ll benefit from the beauty of your home improvements every day, and all of your hard work will ultimately add to the resale value of your home.

If your home has been on the market for a while then you know how rough today’s housing market is. Home prices are dropping, there are many more houses for sale and everyone is in competition for the same number of potential home buyers. The key to increasing your home’s value and then selling your house quickly is to set it apart from other homes in the area. You need to give your home more features and make it more appealing than the other homes in your neighborhood.

These sort of home improvements are not necessarily cheap, but by spending a little money to fix up your house you could end up making a lot of money in a potential home sale. If you’re going to do these home improvements in order to sell your home then you should strongly consider hiring professionals and not doing them yourself. Professional contractors will do the work quicker and will more than likely do a better job than you could yourself. That extra step between professional and amateur home improvement will show when you put your house on the market.

Here are the top five home improvement projects to consider:

Professional Landscaping and Updated Exterior: With the increased number of homes on the market buyers are able to be more choosy and many are initially judging homes with a simple “drive by” look. If your home doesn’t have that curb appeal then it’s time to spend some money having the front yard professionally landscaped and maybe updating the exterior siding, windows and doors. Make sure your home can be seen from the road and looks freshly updated. A first impression can make all the difference between selling your home and having it on the market for months or years at a time.

Updated Bathrooms: The last twenty years have brought a lot of modern designs and updates to the bathroom and buyers are looking for that. Don’t go overboard but new cabinets, flooring, sinks and showers are almost a must. Whirlpool tubs and electric towel dryers are almost becoming standard bathroom equipment in many newer homes, so you may want to consider doing the same to your bathrooms.

Kitchen Remodel: Kitchens are tricky because you can very easily spend a lot of money updating a kitchen only to to have the kitchen not meet someone else’s taste. Try to stick with neutral and light colors in the kitchen. Modern appliances that stay with the home will always garner more interest and consider spending the extra money on stainless steel appliances which are still very popular.

Updated Flooring: Floors are often overlooked in home remodelling but there are a lot of new affordable and durable flooring options that can change the look and feel of a room as much as a fresh coat of paint. Consider replacing any vinyl flooring with tile or some sort of laminate replacement floor and definitely clean or replace any worn or dated carpeting.

Additional Rooms: Putting an addition on a home is always a great way to increase buyer interest and your home’s value because more space warrants a higher price most of the time. If your home is just like all the other homes for sale in your neighborhood but your home has an extra bedroom or entertainment area then your home will obviously be more appealing.

The one thing to remember is that you should not go overboard and improve your home right out of your price range. Only consider improving your home with about 10% of your home’s selling price. So if your home is worth about $200,000 then you might want to consider spending no more than $20,000 on home improvements. If you spend more than that then you may not be able to recoup your expenditure when you sell your home.

How do can you pay for all these home improvements? Many people are turning to home improvement loans to pay for these sort of projects in order to sell their homes. Banks, mortgage companies, lending companies and even large hardware stores all offer various home improvement loan and financing options to consider. These types of loans are becoming popular and competitive as more and more people realize that they need to improve their home in order to sell their home.